Michelin Guide is the most prestigious restaurant rating publication, far older than Zagat and other restaurant ratings and certainly better than Yelp.com peer reviews.

Michelin, the French tire company, has a storied history in restaurant reviews. Its rankings carry so much weight there that losing a star can drive a restaurant to ruin. For all its guides, full-time professional restaurant critics undergo a rigorous course of training before being turned loose on unsuspecting restaurants and hotels. They eat anywhere from four to eight times in any restaurant before determining its rating.

Only six Bay Area restaurants received a two-star rating: two in San Francisco (Aqua and Michael Mina), two in Wine Country (Cyrus and the Restaurant at Meadowood), and two in Silicon Valley (Chez TJ in Mountain View and Manresa in Los Gatos).

This year, 27 restaurants in the area received one star, four more than last year. The newcomers are: Ame in San Francisco, Coi in San Francisco, Cortez in San Francisco, Madrona Manor in Healdsburg, One Market in San Francisco and Redd in Yountville.

Link

2008 rankings of San Francisco Bay Area restaurants.

*** (3 stars) – A very good restaurants in its category

** (2 stars) – Excellent cooking and worth a detour

* (1 star) – Exceptional cuisine and worth the journey

	2-Star Restaurants	City	Neighborhood
Aqua		San Francisco	Financial District
Chez TJ		Mountain View	Peninsula
Cyrus		Healdsburg	Sonoma County
Manresa		Los Gatos	Peninsula
Meadowood, The Restaurant		St. Helena	Napa Valley
Michael Mina		San Francisco	Financial District

	3 Star- Restaurants	City	Neighborhood
The French Laundry		Yountville	Napa Valley

Update:

Following are several updates since going to press in late August.

Baraka
288 Connecticut St.
San Francisco (Mission District)
Under new ownership, Aug. 2007

Cortez
550 Geary St.
San Francisco (Financial District)
Co-executive chef Louis Maldonado has left after four years
Seth Bowden will now be the sole executive chef

Fifth Floor
12 4th St., San Francisco (SoMa)
Recently announced that Chef Laurent Manrique of Aqua will be acting as consulting chef

N.V.
1106 1st St., Napa
Closed late August
The former chef/owner Peter Halikas will be taking over as executive chef at Brix in Yountville

Olivia
1453 Dwight Way
Berkeley
Closed as of September

Tablespoon
2209 Polk St.
San Francisco (Nob Hill)
Recently closed and location is now Bar Johnny

I am an oenophile, and enjoy drinking red wines and of course, always enjoy shopping and tasting new wines.

I won’t say that I have a very sophisticated palate in tasting red wine, but I generally find that award-winning wines that have competed in blind tasting competitions would give me some indicator to the quality of the wine.

I found this trick or hack for you to list the Gold Medal wines in BevMo (bookmark this link) and you will be able to sort the wines:

Visit Bevmo here .

• Gold medal wines
• Sort the price from Low to High
• And… now you can get the wine for the best value (so to speak).

FYI, here in San Francisco Bay Area, I have a few wine stores that I enjoy shopping at:

• The Wine Club (http://www.thewineclub.com/) – 953 Harrison Street, San Francisco, CA
• Costco (enough said)
• Local Trader Joes (http://www.traderjoes.com/locations.asp) . Sometimes you can find a bargain Sonoma or Napa cabernet or merlot at less than $7.00 per bottle.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you have other findings to share with other oenophiles!

Disclosure: I love new world wines (Napa Valley) better than old world wines.

I found out about 1019898 and 1010229, and you could save on your long distance and international phone calls to Asia. They have great rates. US interstate is 2c / minute, but the real deal I think is in the international rates. They do have a connection fee of 10 cents and 20 cents per call, but overall it still is cheaper than anything else I have found.

See International rates for 1019898

See International rates for 1010229
I used to use OneSuite, however it gets tedious to re-charge the pin each time.

Dialing instructions for 1019898 :

For calls within the USA and Canada for using 1019898
Dial 101 9898 + 1 + area code + number

For international calls for using 1019898

Dial 101 9898 + 011 + country code + number

Dialing instructions for 1010229 :

For calls within the USA and Canada:
Dial 1010 229+ 1 + area code + number

For international calls:

Dial 1010 229 + 011 + country code + number

There are NO monthly fees with 1019898 and 1010229. You are only charged for calls actually made and charges appear on your regular Pac Bell or Verizon phone bill.

Update: 1019898 works for residents of state of California, using Pacbell or Verizon.

At this moment the 1010229 network is only available in the states of California, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and the great Toronto area.

Do you know that those small lady bugs can help you with your garden? Maybe we all should considering to do pests control in an organic way not just because we know exposure to pesticides has been linked to a long list of diseases and health problem for us human (the center of disease control has documented cases of farmworker illnes after exposure to pesticides) but it is also to protect our environment including air, water, soil, plants, animals, etc around us, for our earth and our offsprings =)

I found this at Lowe’s garden center: “LADIES IN RED” and here’s the writing at the back of the package

For control of
Aphids, Spider mites, Thrips, White Fly and other harmful plant pests on your roses, trees, shrubs and flowers in your garden and greenhouse. Adult ladybugs can consume up to 80 aphids or plant pests per day

Instructions
Release ladybugs in the evening out of direct sunlight, after the area has been watered. Clip the corner of the mesh bag and sprinkle ladies out onto your plants, or shrubs. For trees you can tack the mesh bag to the trunk and let the ladies crawl up the tree.

Link

In San Francisco Bay Area, housing prices are among the highest in the nation. In some Bay Area cities such as Palo Alto, CA and Cupertino, CA – the housing prices are even higher. Part of this is driven from the quality of the public schools in this area.
From US News High School ranking.

Seven South Bay schools have a lot to brag about today – they’re among the top 100 in the nation according to a new survey by U.S. News and World Report.

Lynbrook High School in San Jose ranks #73 out of 100 and that, along with eight other schools in the Bay Area, is a notable accomplishment – considering more than 18,000 high schools were analyzed in the U.S..

The list focuses on broad achievement in the U.S.. The rating is done by U.S. News & World Report. It’s the magazine’s first-ever ranking of America’s best high schools. It measures how well schools educate all of its students and their college readiness – using a formula with a three-step analysis.
First, it looks at students’ state testing data, like math and reading results, and factors in poorer-performing students. The analysis also evaluates how well each school’s disadvantaged students did. A third factor is availability of college-level coursework and how well students did on A.P., or advanced-placement tests. The top 100 schools earn gold medals. Nine in the Bay Area shot to the top of that list.

Ranking of Bay Area High Schools from U.S. News & World Report:

#2 Pacific Collegiate Charter, Santa Cruz
#49 Mission San Jose, Fremont
#59 Monta Vista, Cupertino
#66 Henry M. Gunn, Palo Alto
#68 Piedmont High, Piedmont
#69 Lowell High, San Francisco
#72 Saratoga High, Saratoga
#73 Lynbrook High, San Jose
#85 Palo Alto High, Palo Alto

In total, the U.S. News ranking recognizes almost 1,600 high schools that meet its criteria for great learning achievement. Aside from the top-100 gold medal schools, many more can boast silver and bronze status and at least half a dozen of those are also in the Bay Area.

Link

Okay, I live in San Francisco (in the San Francisco Bay Area) which has some of the best (read: mildest) weather in U.S.A. The weather is generally mild, around here. Bay area is home to some of the most diverse micro climates around though. Yesterday the weather was so sunny, and the temperatures was in the 90s F and this afternoon it gets so foggy around here.

San Francisco specifically can get very foggy during the summer. See these 2 pictures courtesy of Wikipedia and you’ll see the difference.

San Francisco – Nice day:

San Francisco – Foggy day:

Now, what is the cloudiest city in America.

Apparently after I downloaded the data from Weather Facts, and doing some simple Excel Sorting, I found that “Cold Bay, AK” is the cloudiest city in America with 304 cloudy days a year (365 days).

I found that my city, San Francisco, has 105 cloudy days per year (365 days).

The sunniest city in USA: Yuma, AZ (did you see 3:10 to Yuma yet? )

Link (Wikipedia), Link (WeatherFacts) , Cold bay (AK)